The historic success of French cuisine

[macrosan]

Oh no, Wilfrid, don't do that. You might encourage some others to do the same, and where would we be then ?

[helenas]

Oh no, Wilfrid, don't do that. You might encourage some others to do the same, and where would we be then ?

Too late!

Since Wilfrid posted his question regarding french influence on russian cuisine,

i've ordered couple of books and contacted two experts on the matter

[macrosan]

Helena, I beg you to keep the books in their plain wrappers, and not under any circumstances to divulge any of their contents on this august forum.

Please don't confuse me with facts

The eGullet Manual of Common Practice, Chapter 174

[lxt]

In any case, what explains the French influence on Russian culture?

Though the penetration of French culture in different forms, including French cuisine, in most cases could be ascribed to French colonialism, Russia seemed to embrace French civilization voluntarily. Despite Russia‘s being under French culinary influence for a century, one may argue that the dominance of French cuisine in the royal court was originally driven rather by fashion and was a result at first of adopting French culture.

Though Peter the Great was the first to make Russian men shave their beards and drink coffee in the morning instead of the traditional tea, his cultural preference lay with the Dutch baroque. With time, however, French and Italian influences prevailed. J.B. Leblond, the French architect, brought to Saint Petersburg his refined Renaissance taste (e.g. Peterhof, a Versailles-like palace with a garden in the French style that Leblond had learned from his teacher Le Notre).

The real penetration of French culture into the Russian court, however, is attributed to the time of Catherine the Great, a Prussian who spoke Russian with a heavy accent. Nonetheless, her love for Russia and her ambition to bring her adopted nation to the world arena as an equal were enormous. Catherine seemed to have a conflict in resenting the French attitude toward Russians as barbarians, and on the other hand, embracing the French language and culture with Voltaire, Montesquieu and Rousseau. The Russian aristocracy soon incorporated French culture into their daily lives, giving the noblemen a common identity where French language set them apart from the Russian peasantry. Parisian fashions were the only truly acceptable styles, and French cuisine was the rage, whether at home, in the diplomatic congresses, or in any public restaurant. In fact, French food was quite essential to the social success of a diplomat, politician, or nobleman and could be as important as having the right connections with the Royal family.

With the destruction of Napoleon, however, Russia obtained certain prestige on the international stage and the war with once-adored France reduced (but didn’t eliminate) the passion of the Russian nobility for the French. In the highest St. Petersburg salons, women were now trying to have fashionable conversations in Russian for the first time in decades. French influence, however, remained pretty strong up until the revolution in 1917.

During the time of Alexander I, Carême, called the "architect of French cuisine," became head chef for Russia's Czar. Carême was also known for his contributions to the kitchens of the prince Talleyrand who said, "England has three sauces and 360 religions; France has three religions and 360 sauces," and for the Prince Regent of England. There are speculations that he introduced classic Russian dishes into French cuisine, including borscht and coulibiac. He also cooked at the Court of Vienna, Austria, the British Embassy in Paris, the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle, and in the household of Princess Bagration. His last employer was the French banker Baron James de Rothschild, for whom he cooked for seven years.

The French influence and nearly all cultural and certainly all French culinary contributions were forgotten in Russia after the slogan “Who was nothing will become everything” materialized and haute cuisine was replaced with cheap-eats in 1917. Chapters portraying high society in Tolstoy’s “War and Peace” and originally written in French sadly had to be translated into Russian.

One of the encouraging signs of recovery now in Russia is the revival of the 'Week of French Cuisine.' This and similar events were held regularly in Moscow beginning in 1862 and last took place in 1912. The central dessert piece is now Napoleon cake shaped as the Emperor’s cocked hat.

French culture seemed to nourish Russian life for decades, and what did Russia give to France? Borscht, coulibiac, and bistro, the name of which originated from the Russian word “quickly.”

[Wilfrid]

Thanks to lxt for that, and especially for highlighting the "cheap eats" downside to the 1917 revolution. Although Escoffier and Soyer spent the major parts of their professional careers in England, I had forgotten Careme's sojourn in Russia.

I have only just started to do some reading in response to the question, and hope to develop some thoughts over the next week or so. Just as a starter, Amy Trubek's book, Haute Cuisine: How the French invented the Culinary Profession has just arrived. This is from her conclusion:

"No single factor explains the power of France in the public sphere, why, in particular, French haute cuisine came to define the practice of the modern culinary profession and the discourse on fine food...The symbolic significance of French haute cuisine cannot be denied, eventually extending to include place, people, and practice. Genealogical investigations thus lead back to France, but ultimately place becomes more symbol (of elite culture, of mastery) than simple earth, rock and water. From the beginning, haute cuisine was in demand only among elite members of European society. Only after 1800, with the rise of the bourgeois public sphere during the nineteenth century, did the 'high' part of French cuisine come to have a broader social impact. A new class of bourgeois customers emerged who paid attention to French haute cuisine; their consumption was both literal and symbolic."

Unsurprisingly, historical adoption of French haute cuisine signified more than just eating what was the on the plate. The notion that so many countries decided in favor of French food for upscale dining on the basis of no more than the quality of the dishes is, of course, naive. This isn't merely a historical phenomenon: someone who chooses a fine French restaurant today is saying more about themselves than just that they likethe menu. As Dr Trubek says elsewhere, the notion that French equals "fancy" has a complex genealogy in Europe.

I hope to put some meat on these bones when I have more time.

[Wilfrid]

Well, I have gone through some of the secondary materials kindly cited by Steve Klc earlier. When I found the Wheaton book, I realised that I had in fact read it a year or so ago. It provides a thorough history of French cuisine up to 1789, and so doesn't address the question framed in this thread. The background is interesting. Wheaton (and Stephen Mennell) both date the creation of a distinctive national, recognizably French cuisine, from the middle of the seventeenth century at the earliest - they both dismiss the oft-repeated story of Catherine De Medici's introduction of Italian gastronomy to France as a red herring. The gastronomic ostentation of Louis XIV's court seems to have given an impetus to grand, elaborate dining as a fashion for the aristocracy within France.

Raymond Solokov recapitulates these points. His book, Why we eat what we eat I found revelatory when I first read it. He dismantled many of my preconceptions about what constitutes a national cuisine by demonstrating the manner in which ingredients and cooking techniques have been passed around the world. His agenda, however, is more to show the surprising influence of the new world on the old, rather than to explain how an old world cuisine, such as that of France, became internationally distributed. He seems to take that for granted, and devotes more attention to the development and influence of nouvelle cuisine in the 1970s, which is much easier to trace.

As Steve Klc said, De Groot also focusses on the Bocuse/Troisgros/etc revolution in French food. He covers the history in short order, but does make an interesting reference to the "world wide influence of Antoine Careme". lxt discussed Careme's role in Russia earlier in the thread, and he also passed briefly through England. The distribution of his writings might give us a basis to quantify the importance of his influence, and I should look at what Willans says about that. The "great man/woman" theory of history is easy to reject in favor of socio-economic analyses, but we should at least bear in mind, as a hypothesis, the importance of an individual like Careme.

I still anticipate that an important part of the story is going to be the adoption of French manners in general by certain strata of society in certain countries. That, in itself, can hardly be a simple story, not least because some of the countries in question were at war with France during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and "French" was not a label of quality in any kind of simplistic way.

I now need to spend more time looking at the two most promising sources I have unearthed so far: Trubek, described in my earlier post, and Stephen Mennell's All manners of food. I haven't yet found Shaw on Escoffier.

This may take a little while.

[Robert Schonfeld]

Wheaton (and Stephen Mennell) both date the creation of a distinctive national, recognizably French cuisine, from the middle of the seventeenth century at the earliest - they both dismiss the oft-repeated story of Catherine De Medici's introduction of Italian gastronomy to France as a red herring.  The gastronomic ostentation of Louis XIV's court seems to have given an impetus to grand, elaborate dining as a fashion for the aristocracy within France.

I'm not surprised that the Catherine story is discounted. It seems to me that it's likely to be less the case that the cuisine of the Medici court had a direct influence on the French court than that she brought with her certain basic recipes and techniques (such as bechamel and veloute) that formed an underlayment for what was to come in France.

As to the idea of gastronomic ostentation, I wonder if earlier big time piggies, such as the English nobility, were a model.

Still, the really interesting question for me remains the success of the French "distribution", as Wilfrid puts it, of culture, including food and manners.

I wish Barbara Tuchman had taken up this subject.

[Wilfrid]

Well, it's big time British pigginess with regard to french food that interests me. It is documented that the Prince Regent imported a French chef and gave French-style banquets, and he was a mega-piggy. But why French? - especially since this was a during a period of Anglo-French hostilities, and the popular press were deriding French food, along with all French manners, as nasty, smelly and foreign.

I suppose one basic thing I ought to do is generate a time-line underlying all this, so we know where we are.

[Robert Schonfeld]

Found this on the About.com Italian food site while looking for some info for the gelato thread:

"In The Art of Eating Well Pellegrino Artusi, the late dean of Italian gastronomes, says that the “art of chilling” was invented by the Italians, and notes that the ice creams Caterina de’Medici’s Florentine chefs served the Parisian court in the 1530s caused considerable sensation."

The host of the site, Kyle Phillips, has translated Artusi.

[Fat Guy]

I thought it was invented by the Italians, but, like, during the Roman Empire.

[Toby]

Elizabeth David in Harvest of the Cold Months, the Social History of Ice and Ices, traces the transmission of ice and ices (and I think has some general history of food transmission, including the 19th century origins of the de Medici story -- remember seeing it but can't find it now). I'm too tired to look at it tonight (just got back from our first day at the market -- 13 hours on my feet, but it was great), so will look at it tomorrow and post if there's anything interesting.

[mamster]

"In The Art of Eating Well Pellegrino Artusi, the late dean of Italian gastronomes, says that the “art of chilling” was invented by the Italians

Look, I grew up in the 80s and I know for a fact that the art of chilling was invented by Run-DMC.

You know my favorite thing about eGullet? Every time I hit-and-run a thread with a one-liner, I can console myself with the fact that tommy's done it eighteen times as often as I have, and they'll come after him first.

[oraklet]

from catarina to louis seize, the french court was the most brilliant of europe. during that time, france was politically centralized, and it became the richest and most powerful state, thus leading a lot of other kings and princes (being at war with the french king or not is irrellevant, really, when it comes to raffinement) to copy its style in politics, food, furniture, dress, architecture, art etc. the danish kings, for instance, imported french court architects as well as huguenot craftsmen. even after the revolution, there was such a deep-rooted tradition of raffinement, and such general wealth, that france continued to be on the lead. only with the upcome of mass culture and the political dominance of usa, the scene shifted to some degree.

for all the interesting details, isn't it this simple?

[jaybee]

History records the adoption of cheap distilled alcohol (gin) causing mass drunkenness for many years during the eatly 1700s in England (and Denmark). As far as I know, this never occured in France during the same period. Does this tell us something about the differences between the French and British cultures, or just that industrialization was much further advanced and the concentration of population in large cities was greater in England than it was in France, creatng vast popualtions of urban poor with nothing to do but drink to dull their pain.? Would this have any connection to the elevation of French cuisine, as France remained a more aggragrian culture far longer. Just asking.

[Gavin Jones]

It is the other way round. Having achieved some limited form of self-consciousness the early modern protestant industrialized nations noticed that they only had terrible food to eat. They then resorted to mass gin based anaesthetization until the 1990's when proper food arrived.

The French, by contrast, suckled on Latour, achieved full gastronomic consciousness and as such were able to create cuisine grandmere.

Because the Spanish & Italians did not have an Appelation Controlle system they sadly languished in the gastronomic shade. Foolishly believing that a diet of risotto, porchetta and lampredotto was adequate they ate what the Pope told them.

Have I got this right?

[Wilfrid]

Back to the serious stuff. It seems Oraklet is absolutely right. The specific social and economic state of the French aristocracy in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries seems to be very important. Let me cite Mennell again for the following ruminations.

A process which began in the sixteenth century, and reached something of a culmination under Louis XIV, was a kind of centralization of the French aristocracy around the court. One motivation was the crown's desire to reduce the independent strength, and hence potential threat to stability, of the main aristocractic families. It seems that very strict hierachy existed within the French aristocracy. Not only was a close association with the royal court essential to maintaining prestige and high rank, it was also very expensive. Ostentation in matters of lifestyle was de rigeur in order to preserve rank. The glittering social life of Louis XIV's court is well -documented, including elaborate banquets, and the closer to the throne members of the aristocracy were, the more elaborate the banquets and balls they were expected to throw themselves. This manner of courtly life persisted, of course, until 1789, and the displays of conspicuous consumption - which apparently drove many of these aristocrats close to bankrupcty - fuelled revolutionary fervor.

Contrast the situation in England. According to the sources cited by Mennell, the distinction in sixteenth and seventeenth century England between the aristocracy and the "gentry" (landowners, squires, knights) was less marked than in France. Many of the gentry were as wealthy and powerful as those with titles. The aristocracy and the gentry together constituted a very numerous class, with great independent strength. The trend in England was the same as in France - to undermine power which threatened the throne by drawing the wealthy aristocracy closer to the court. In England, however, the strategy signally failed. The revolutions of 1640/60 and 1688 brought the development of an absolutist monarchy to a complete halt in England, and created the consitutional settlement of a monarch in parliament with Lords and Commons which persists to this day.

In England, the wealth and power remained in the country, beyond the court. There was no equivalent of Versailles. Grand dining in the French style was introduced in England later and for other reasons. (Which I am still exploring).

[Jonathan Day]

There are three strands in the story that I hope we can pick up at some point. What follows is almost entirely fact-free (both of saturated and of unsaturated facts), but I will go ahead and write it in the assertive mode, even though it is only supposition.

One is the comparative development of intellectual elites in the different countries. My impression is that France started earlier and went further in classifying and systematising many aspects of life, including the domestic arts and sciences, than did other countries. Dictionaries were produced by individuals in England, but the French had the Academy.

The second is the existence of stereotypes (positive and negative) from one country to another. My recollection is that in the 18th century the general American view was that France represented a highly cityfied and refined culture. To a largely agrarian and rural populace, this was a negative. Benjamin Franklin may have gone to Paris but most of his countrymen had no interest in doing so. Conversely, the French saw the English as "rosbifs" (roast beef eaters) i.e. ignorant and crude.

The third is the transmission of the haute cuisine as opposed to the simpler rural cuisine or the intermediate cuisine bourgeiose. This would follow from a tendency to systematise, and also from a perception of the French as highly urban and refined -- essentially a conflation of Paris and France.

It's hard for me to imagine the story without some element of each of these.

[Wilfrid]

The urban/rural distinction relates to what Mennell teaches about the respective aristocracies in the 17th Century - in France, the wealth and power congregated around the royal court, in England decentralized around the provinces.

This very rough pattern supports the mounting prestige of big-occasion, banquet-style grand dining in France, contrasted with the persisting prestige of plain, "honest" country-style cooking in England. And indeed, during the eighteenth century, the press - and cartoonists in particular - develop representative stereotypes. The French lampoon the English as obese rosbifs and the English, proudly boasting of the "roast beef of Old England" lampoon the French as skeletally thin eaters of stringy meat and disgusting sauces.

Although I wasn't thinking of a comparison between English and French history when I started this thread, it's easier for me to grapple with than a comparison between France and other countries. I would speculate that Germany and Italy, each unified during the 16th and 17th Centuries, may have had some smaller scale royal or ducal courts of some grandeur - such as the Medicis in Florence - but also nothing to rival the French court. I don't know about Madrid.

So far, this is just the beginning of the story of how French cuisine got itself into a position to explode around the world. We probably need some more building blocks before we get to the actual question. (This is fun, but I wish someone was paying us to do it! ).

[jaybee]

Many moons ago, I posited the same theory for frances supremacy in cuisine as that posted by Oraklet , though less eloquently elaborated. This is not to say I said it first, but to say that my uniformed and totally intuitive view of history corresponds with his educated view, and apparently Wilfrid's cobbled together theories.

Now, who is the emmis?

[Wilfrid]

Many moons ago, I posited the same theory for frances supremacy in cuisine as that posted by Oraklet , though less eloquently elaborated.  This is not to say I said it first, but to say that my uniformed and totally intuitive view of history corresponds with his educated view, and apparently Wilfrid's cobbled together theories. 

Now, who is the emmis?

That would be Professor Mennell's and Professor Wheadon's cobbled together theories, based on their reading of the cobbled together original sources, oh cheeky one.

[Robert Schonfeld]

I am seeing more clearly now that characteristics of centralization, systematization, and scale, coincided in France at an historical moment such that their manifestations (architecture, fashion, cuisine, etc.) were perceived as stylistic imperatives throughout Europe and beyond.

I'm particularly interested in the details of how this came about. I see a need for extensive primary research in many libraries. We should apply for a grant, get a university publisher, write a book. Then, we would be the emmis.

(edited for anglicized Yiddish.)

[Wilfrid]

I agree, Robert. The "normal" thing to do would be for me (or whoever) to go away for a month, do the research, come back and post a properly thought out view, with appropriate citations. But that would lose the interactive part of this.

What strikes me as an irony, from what I've seen so far, is that it was precisely the non-conformist, unhierarchical, "liberal" trends in English society in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries which inhibited the development of a grand, courtly cuisine. Charles I really wanted to be a Sun King, but he got the close shave more than a century before the French topped their royals. I am using "grand cuisine" deliberately, following Mennell, because these vast, ornamental banquets are not yet, I would contend, haute cuisine. Some of them were probably gastronomically disastrous. But the path, via Careme, from grand to haute cuisine is pretty clear.

[Steve Plotnicki]

JD - Your point about the French classifying things systematically reminds me of something a wine board friend of mine once said. He said that French supremecy in food and wine was due to the fact that they are by nature mathematicians (this person happened to be a statistician.) And that they were quite happy taking on the job of codifying every parcel of land according to its attributes.

[Steve Klc]

Since more than a few have mentioned the Medici myth, I should chime in to second Toby's suggestion of the Elizabeth David "Harvest of the Cold Months," her last book cobbled together after her death and somewhat disjointed as a result. In it, however, is a very clear chapter right on point called "Ice Houses and Sherbets: Tales from Turkey and the Medici Legend," and especially pp. 44-49.

No 16-17C reports detail Catherine having imported "insensate Italian luxuries to France" and "No contemporary accusation that Catherine perverted French taste with the introduction of ice, iced wine and table forks seems ever to have been made against her."

Later David writes "How curious, then, that in modern times--meaning from about the mid nineteenth century on--it has come to be believed that Catherine de Medici was accompanied to France by a bevy of Italian confectioners who taught their French colleagues how to make ices and frozen sherbets. Since the story is widely believed in Italy, appears indeed to be central to the credo of the Italian ice-cream trade, and is one I was myself once gullible enough to believe and repeat, it is necessary to say here that although the source of the story remains unidentified, it is plain that its origins are in the nineteenth century."

She goes on to pick apart a few of those responsible, Hayward (1853) and Beeton (1861), discusses in glorious detail the "linguistic trap of the term sorbet" --looking back in time, seems "chilling" is not what we ascribe it to be!--and there's this very nice paragraph "When Catherine de Medici left Florence to go to France in the sixteenth century, it was reported that she took with her the best of chefs to make sure that she would be supplied with frozen creams and ices every day, runs one version of the Catherine story. A catch there--apart from the little matter of nobody yet knowing how to freeze 'creams and ices'--is that when the fourteen-year-old orphaned Catherine was dispatched to Marseille to marry the Duke of Orleans (he too was only fourteen), her entire household was French..."

She goes on in much greater detail and it would be a shame to excerpt more--the chapter is a quick read and an essential one. And then you have to read her later chapter "Ices for the Sun King" as well, which gets into actual recipes and instructions for ices from primary sources.

David could be so understatedly devastating: "Since the story is widely believed in Italy, appears indeed to be central to the credo of the Italian ice-cream trade" which might help put the veracity of what is to be found on the About.com Italian food website into perspective.

[jaybee]

I'm particularly interested in the details of how this came about. I see a need for extensive primary research in many libraries. We should apply for a grant, get a university publisher, write a book. Then, we would be the emmis.

And the one who brings the manuscript to the publisher, he would be the emmisary?

I'm envisioning a Jules Verne "time traveller" approach here, where our redoubtable gastonome is transported back in time to experience and discover the evolution of cuisines, repleat with detailed descriptions of his meals. I have dibs on the movie rights.